President Obama and the bipartisan Gang of Eight in Washington who want to create a “pathway to citizenship” for millions of illegal aliens have sent a message loud and clear to those who follow the rules: You’re chumps!

Have you patiently waited for months and years for the State Department and Department of Homeland Security to slog through your application? You’re chumps!

Have you paid thousands of dollars in travel, legal and medical fees to abide by the thicket of entry, employment, health and processing regulations? You’re chumps!

Have you studied for your naturalization test, taken the oath of allegiance to heart, embraced our time-tested principle of the rule of law, and demonstrated that you will be a financially independent, productive citizen? You’re chumps!

Unrepentant amnesty peddlers on both sides of the aisle admit their plan is all about votes and power. Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain continues his futile chase for the Hispanic bloc. Illinois Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez is openly salivating at the prospect of millions of new illegal aliens — future Democratic Party dependents of the Nanny State — who could be eligible for Obamacare and a plethora of other government benefits despite clear prohibitions against them.

These cynical pols insist that the rest of law-abiding Americans and law-abiding permanent residents must support Washington’s push to “do something” because “11 million people are living in the shadows.”

To which I say: So? There are 23 million Americans out of work. Why aren’t they Washington’s top priority anymore? Didn’t both parties once pledge that j-o-b-s for unemployed and underemployed Americans was Job No. 1? Why is the very first major legislative push of 2013 another mass amnesty/voter drive/entitlement expansion?

If Washington is really concerned about people “living in the shadows,” how about prioritizing the jaw-dropping backlog of 500,000-plus fugitive deportee cases. These are more than a half-million illegal aliens who have been apprehended, who had their day in immigration court, who have been ordered to leave the country, and who were then released and absconded into the ether. Poof!

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, pols pretended to get serious about fixing the broken deportation system and enacted absconder apprehension initiatives to track down these national security risks. But over the past dozen years, only 100,000 out of 600,000-plus fugitive illegal aliens targeted by the program have been found. Why isn’t the search and removal of these repeat offenders more important than giving “11 million people living in the shadows” a “pathway to citizenship”?

Question: If border security and immigration enforcement are truly a priority to our elected officials, why must these two basic government responsibilities be tethered to benefits for line-jumping illegal aliens? See whether any politician can answer without sputtering about “11 million people living in the shadows” or invoking the over-worn race card.

(By the way, we all know that moldy “11 million” statistic can’t be right. Open borders groups have cited it for nearly 15 years as amnesty measure after amnesty measure attracted new generations of illegal aliens to the country.)

You know who else deserves more attention and compassion than “11 million people living in the shadows”? The 4.6 million individuals around the world who legally applied for sponsored green cards and followed the established legal immigration process. They’ve been shunted aside while the Obama administration ushers illegal alien “DREAM” waiver winners to the front of the line.

As Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies points out: “It is clear that there is no way the roughly one million or more potential Dreamers can be accommodated by (the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service) without noticeably slowing down the processing of legal immigrants (emphasis added). The agency already processes six million applications a year without the amnesty add-ons.

There have been nearly a dozen major amnesty laws, affecting at least five million illegal aliens, passed since the Reagan 1986 amnesty. These beneficiaries and their families have crowded out legal immigrants and increased their application waiting times in untold ways. GOP Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas asked the Obama administration last summer to disclose data on how much the DREAM waiver amnesty alone has affected adjudication/processing times for everyone else. The White House has failed to answer the request.

Want a reality check? Not one of the past federal amnesties was associated with a decline in illegal immigration. Instead, the number of illegal aliens in the U.S. has tripled since 1986. The total effect of the amnesties was even larger because relatives later joined amnesty recipients, and this number was multiplied by an unknown number of children born to amnesty recipients who then acquired automatic U.S. citizenship.

Hopelessly naive (or stubbornly self-deluded) freshman GOP Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida insists that any new recipients of the Gang of Eight’s Grand Pander scheme will have to “go to the back of the line and wait behind everybody who applied before them, the right way.” Rubio emphasizes to conservative talk show hosts that there will be background checks and rigorous vetting.

But as I’ve reported for the past two decades, the background check process has been corrupted under both Democratic and Republican administrations. In the 1990s, the Clinton administration turned immigration policy into a massive Democratic voter recruitment machine through the Citizenship USA program. Naturalization officers simply abandoned background checks wholesale. In 2003, an INS center in Laguna Niguel solved the massive backlog problem by putting tens of thousands of applications through a shredder. And in 2006, I exposed how some high-immigrant regions rewarded adjudication officers with bonuses for rubber-stamping as many applications as possible without regard to security.

You want “comprehensive immigration reform”? Start with reliable adjudications, fully cleared backlogs, consistent interior enforcement, working background checks for the existing caseload, and efficient and effective deportation policies that punish law-breakers and do right by law-abiders.

And please don’t pretend that piling millions of new illegal aliens onto an already overwhelmed system is going to fix a darned thing. Chumps.

It is time for conservatives to stand up and fight. Yes we are discouraged and depressed after the election on Tuesday. We are mourning the loss of our nation. We have seen defeat after defeat, yet we cannot give up.

We must start our insurrection now. What must we do?

Let’s start our next battle now.

Having just lost this fight, a new fight is probably the last thing most people are thinking about. Yet, time dictates that we must fight now.

On election night, while a disaster of unimaginable proportions unfolded, Boehner gleefully appeared on a stage in Washington to announce that the Republicans were holding the House and by extension, he was keeping his job.

Can someone give me one reason why Boehner should keep his job?

Within a day of the election, he announced that he was putting tax hikes on the table. Boehner wasted no time in raising his freshly laundered white flag of surrender again.

Just after this gem, Boehner announced he was not fighting Obamacare any more. It would be hard to call what Boehner was doing a fight. Perhaps a slow motion surrender would be more accurate. Boehner announced that Obamacare is now the law of the land. And with that pronouncement, Boehner takes his place in the Guiness Book of World Records as the only man to have surrendered more than the French Army.

In fact, emblazoned above the Speaker’s office is a giant motto, “Surrender early and surrender often.”

During the last two years, Boehner did nothing but surrender. Was Obamacare defunded? No, but he did make sure we had a bunch of worthless symbolic votes on Obamacare that would do nothing. Was government shrunk? No. In 2011, spending was up 3% over Nancy Pelosi’s last year.

In fact, can anyone show me a single conservative accomplishment for Boehner’s first term as the Speaker?

The closest thing to an accomplishment is his golf game with Obama. Or perhaps his greatest accomplishment was the times he sent the House into recess so no more damage could be done.

What will Boehner do in the next two years? He will not solved our fiscal cliff problem. He will agree to a solution that simply pushes the problem down the road. He will agree to a “grand bargain” with the Democrats, which involves immediate tax hikes with promised spending cuts (other than military cuts) at some point down the road.

A friend of mine who is a Washington insider told me an interesting story about Boehner. He was one of Gingrich’s lieutenants during the 1995 government shut down. According to my friend, Boehner told people that he learned his lesson from 1995. Never pick a fight with the President. That is Boehner’s wisdom.

He will not fight Obama. He will roll over. He rolled over when the debt ceiling fights came up. He rolled over when the budget fights happened. He is going to roll over when Harry Reid and Barack Obama demand new taxes.

Enough is enough.

Boehner is a feckless failure. He must go.

We conservatives need to start calling our Republican Congressmen and demanding that they pick someone else, other than John Boehner to be the House Speaker.

Who could it be?

First House rules do not require the Speaker to be a member of the House. A new speaker can be someone who is not a Member of Congress. Or, it can be a sitting member of Congress.

Honestly, it does not matter, as long as it is not Boehner.

How about Paul Ryan?

Ryan did well on the campaign trail. He has shown a willingness to confront the Democrats and understands not only the budget but also the desperate need to fix the problems that are going to destroy America.

How about Allen West, whether or not he wins his recount? How about Michele Bachmann? She has shown courage and a willingness to take on tough issues. Plus, she could be good narrowing the so-called “gender gap” we saw in this last election.

We must have new Republican leadership. It starts with the Speaker of the House and it must go through the Party and to the next nominee for President.

It is time for conservatives to stand up and fight. Yes we are discouraged and depressed after the election on Tuesday. We are mourning the loss of our nation. We have seen defeat after defeat, yet we cannot give up.

We must start our insurrection now. What must we do?

Let’s start our next battle now.

Having just lost this fight, a new fight is probably the last thing most people are thinking about. Yet, time dictates that we must fight now.

What is this fight?

We must fight to replace John Boehner as the Speaker of the House.

On election night, while a disaster of unimaginable proportions unfolded, Boehner gleefully appeared on a stage in Washington to announce that the Republicans were holding the House and by extension, he was keeping his job.

Can someone give me one reason why Boehner should keep his job?

Within a day of the election, he announced that he was putting tax hikes on the table. Boehner wasted no time in raising his freshly laundered white flag of surrender again.

Just after this gem, Boehner announced he was not fighting Obamacare any more. It would be hard to call what Boehner was doing a fight. Perhaps a slow motion surrender would be more accurate. Boehner announced that Obamacare is now the law of the land. And with that pronouncement, Boehner takes his place in the Guiness Book of World Records as the only man to have surrendered more than the French Army.

In fact, emblazoned above the Speaker’s office is a giant motto, “Surrender early and surrender often.”

During the last two years, Boehner did nothing but surrender. Was Obamacare defunded? No, but he did make sure we had a bunch of worthless symbolic votes on Obamacare that would do nothing. Was government shrunk? No. In 2011, spending was up 3% over Nancy Pelosi’s last year.

In fact, can anyone show me a single conservative accomplishment for Boehner’s first term as the Speaker?

The closest thing to an accomplishment is his golf game with Obama. Or perhaps his greatest accomplishment was the times he sent the House into recess so no more damage could be done.

What will Boehner do in the next two years? He will not solved our fiscal cliff problem. He will agree to a solution that simply pushes the problem down the road. He will agree to a “grand bargain” with the Democrats, which involves immediate tax hikes with promised spending cuts (other than military cuts) at some point down the road.

A friend of mine who is a Washington insider told me an interesting story about Boehner. He was one of Gingrich’s lieutenants during the 1995 government shut down. According to my friend, Boehner told people that he learned his lesson from 1995. Never pick a fight with the President. That is Boehner’s wisdom.

He will not fight Obama. He will roll over. He rolled over when the debt ceiling fights came up. He rolled over when the budget fights happened. He is going to roll over when Harry Reid and Barack Obama demand new taxes.

Enough is enough.

Boehner is a feckless failure. He must go.

We conservatives need to start calling our Republican Congressmen and demanding that they pick someone else, other than John Boehner to be the House Speaker.

Who could it be?

First House rules do not require the Speaker to be a member of the House. A new speaker can be someone who is not a Member of Congress. Or, it can be a sitting member of Congress.

Honestly, it does not matter, as long as it is not Boehner.

How about Paul Ryan?

Ryan did well on the campaign trail. He has shown a willingness to confront the Democrats and understands not only the budget but also the desperate need to fix the problems that are going to destroy America.

How about Allen West, whether or not he wins his recount? How about Michele Bachmann? She has shown courage and a willingness to take on tough issues. Plus, she could be good narrowing the so-called “gender gap” we saw in this last election.

We must have new Republican leadership. It starts with the Speaker of the House and it must go through the Party and to the next nominee for President.

A Washington college said their non-discrimination policy prevents them from stopping a transgender man from exposing himself to young girls inside a women’s locker room, according to a group of concerned parents.

“Little girls should not be exposed to naked men, period,” said David Hacker, senior legal counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom. A group of concerned parents contacted the legal firm for help.

Hacker said a 45-year-old male student, who dresses as a woman and goes by the name Colleen Francis, undressed and exposed his genitals on several occasions inside the woman’s locker room at Evergreen State College.

Students from nearby Olympia High School as well as children at a local swimming club share locker rooms with the college.

According to a police report, the mother of a 17-year-old girl complained after her daughter saw the transgender individual walking naked in the locker room. A female swim coach confronted the man sprawled out in a sauna exposing himself. She ordered him to leave and called police.

The coach later apologized when she discovered the man was transgendered but explained there were girls using the facility as young as six years old who weren’t used to seeing male genitals.

“They’re uncomfortable with him being in there, her, being in there and are shocked by it,” parent Kristi Holterman told KIRO-TV.

According to the police report, the local district attorney probably will not pursue charges because he said the “criminal law is very vague in this area.”

Francis told KIRO-TV that he was born a man but chose to live as a woman in 2009. Francis said he felt discriminated against after he was told told leave.

“This is not 1959 Alabama,” Francis told the television station. “We don’t call police for drinking from the wrong water fountain.”

Hacker and local parents are outraged over the college’s response to the incident.

“The idea that the college and the local district attorney will not act to protect young girls is appalling,” he said. “What Americans are seeing here is the poisoned fruit of so-called ‘non-discrimination’ laws and policies.”

Hacker said the college could be held liable for damages if any of the young girls is harmed by the transgendered individual.

“Clearly, allowing a person who is biologically a man to undress and expose himself to young girls places those girls at risk for emotional distress and harm,” he wrote in a letter to the college.

What the hell is wrong with these people?

When a man exposes himself to under aged children, it is a crime. It is a sexual offense. Most states call it indecent exposure.

And this freak has the nerve to claim he is the victim?

Anyone with three functioning brain cells realizes this is not just wrong; it is evil. Even a fair number of liberals will agree this is wrong!

Yet, this idiotic college claims it cannot do anything about this. The coach did the right thing by calling the police but then apologizes when this freak claims to be “transgendered?” Has the entire world taken leave of its senses or his this outbreak of dead brain disease simply confined to a part of Washington?

A generation ago, the fathers of those little girls would have resolved this issue and once this person got out of the hospital, he would never do it again.

The left calls this kind of “tolerance,” “progress.” Real Americans sit here and wonder what the hell has happened to this nation.

At a time when the biggest issues are the economy, the reform of entitlement programs, the national debt and deficit, many Americans are blissfully unaware of the machine that keeps their taxpayer dollars flowing from every federal government department and agency. Even with a $16 trillion dollar debt, the money gushes forth.

In a Wall Street Journal column by William McGurn about government spending, he says that “Surely the real issue here is whether people have any meaningful choice. Because government funding tends to crowd out private funding, it leaves fewer and more expensive options in its wake. Generally that means you have to be as rich as Warren Buffett or living in the most inaccessible Ozarks backwoods to be in a position to forego federal dollars.”

Point well taken; older Americans, having paid into the involuntary system, understandably expect to receive Social Security checks every month and the same applies to having Medicare cover escalating healthcare costs. Many younger Americans are going to college on government loans. There is a plethora of government programs that redistribute taxpayer dollars on all manner of worthy or dubious recipients.

The most troubling aspect of government largess is the political factor. I was reminded of this upon receiving a news release from the U.S. Forest Service announcing $3.5 million to support community forests. One might reasonably ask why, at a time when the national debt is $16 trillion dollars why the government is spending money on community forests.

On closer examination, it appears that the grants are going to communities in states that Democrats need in terms of their Electoral College votes. Grants went to communities in Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, notable swing states, as well as dependable ones such as Washington, Vermont, and New Hampshire.

Then, too, it should be noted that every U.S. State maintains offices in Washington, D.C. to ensure it receives the government grants being handed out for all aspects of their needs, much of which is dependent on federal funding. Collectively, the states are over $4 trillion in debt; much of which is tied to public worker’s pensions and other benefits.

The money gusher also explains the exponential growth in the lobbying industry. A 2005 Washington Post article noted that “The number of registered lobbyists in Washington has more than doubled since 2000 to more than 34,750 while the amount that lobbyists charge their new clients has increased by as much as 100 percent. Only a few other businesses have enjoyed greater prosperity in an otherwise fitful economy.”

Wikipedia says that “By 2011, one estimate of overall lobbying spending nationally was $30+ billion in 2010.” Every industry, profession, enterprise and special interest group in America seeks representation and a piece of the pie.

Federal spending understandably reflects the policies of whichever administration is in power and the Obama administration’s obsession with alternative energy has resulted in some of the most wasteful spending—they call it investment—as it lost billions in loan guarantees to companies such as Solyndra and other solar panel manufacturers. The wind power industry could literally not exist without some form of government funding and mandates.

There isn’t a single federal government department and agency that does not engage fulltime in the redistribution of wealth via grants, some of which would be commendable if the nation was not facing economic collapse.

In August, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services announced a $68 million in grants for HIV/AIDS care for women, infants, children, and youth. It also announced awards up to $4.6 million in youth suicide prevention programs to tribes throughout South Dakota.

In August the Department of Education announced more than $2.5 million for seven student support services projects to help students succeed in high education.

Over at the Department of Transportation the Federal Highway Administration announced more than $363 million in funding for various highway projects. When they invited states and cities to apply for federal funding from twelve different grant programs, they received nearly 1,500 requests totaling almost $2.5 billion. Grants have gone to all fifty states, plus Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia.

To push its agenda, the Environmental Protection Agency hands out millions in grants for Community Action for Renewed Environment, Education, Environmental Justice, Student Programs, the National Clean Diesel campaign, and other comparable programs.

Every single federal department, Labor, Justice, Interior, et cetera, is engaged in this largess of programs, including the State Department which oversees foreign aid. It is all funded not only by taxes, but by continuous borrowing—forty cents of every dollar spent, millions every day.

Congress is so shy of cutting any spending program it initiated a doomsday program, the automatic sequestration, the results of which are supposed to spread the pain. It is a failure to exercise the oversight Congress is supposed to exercise. It is the abandonment of one of its most important functions.

The hope is that a Republican Congress and White House will seriously reform the nation’s entitlement programs; literally one half of all the money is committed to be spent before Congress arrives in the Capitol Building to do anything else.

The reality is that our huge federal government will continue to disperse all the money it collects and borrows to justify its existence.

Liberals are anxious to talk about workplace or school shootings when it suits their political agenda. That’s why the usual suspects are observing a vow of silence regarding Wednesday’s armed attack on the Family Research Council (FRC). This incident puts the debate over the right to bear arms in the District of Columbia into the spotlight.

The nation’s capital maintains an all-out ban on open or concealed carry of any firearm, as it refuses to recognize the Second Amendment right to bear arms outside the home. The deranged shooter at FRC knew he was entering a gun-free zone. The security guard there, Leonardo Johnson, didn’t have the “special police” commission authorizing him to use a gun on the job. As a result, he was shot in the arm as he successfully thwarted what could have been a deadly assault on the pro-family group.

Dick Heller, the District’s most famous security guard, said he thinks Washington’s gun laws made the FRC incident especially dangerous. “Any security guard anywhere else in the country — where we have 49 states that have concealed carry — that security guard could have been carrying,” Mr. Heller told The Washington Times. “If this shooter would have pulled what he did in Maryland, they would have taken him out in a body bag.”

Mr. Heller does have the certification allowing him to carry a firearm lawfully while on the job protecting a downtown office building, but that wasn’t enough. A decade ago, he launched his fight for the right to keep a gun at home, taking his case all the way to the Supreme Court.

In 2008, Mr. Heller won, ending the 30-year handgun ban in the nation’s capital. While the Heller decision forced Washington to recognize the constitutional right to keep arms, it didn’t deal with the right to bear arms outside the home.

The Second Amendment activist didn’t rest on this high-court victory. His ongoing “Heller 2” case challenges the constitutionality of the District’s mandatory firearm-registration law. In October 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decided the burdensome requirements are valid only if the District presents “some meaningful evidence, not mere assertions, to justify” them.

The D.C. Council amended its ordinances in May to ease the registration process. Mr. Heller’s attorney, Richard Gardiner, said a new complaint has been filed in the case and is awaiting the District’s response.

Mr. Heller is also working on “Heller 3” to push for concealed-carry rights in Washington. He sent a letter to Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier informing her he intends “to conceal carry this firearm when I’m off duty on the streets at midnight.” His shift runs from 4 p.m. to midnight.

Violent crime in Washington is up 10 percent over last year, proving that disarming law-abiding citizens hasn’t deterred any criminals. D.C. residents shouldn’t have to wait for unelected judges to force the city to respect the Constitution. The city council should grant carry rights now.

Emily Miller is a senior editor for the Opinion pages at The Washington Times.

Government waste is so prevalent that it rarely comes as a surprise. Bureaucrats partying at public expense, inefficient labor-union contracts and massive cost overruns are the natural consequence of giving civil servants the ability to spend money earned by others. Amtrak wants to take waste to new heights. On July 25, the government railroad service proposed to give Washington’s historic Union Station a $7.5 billion face-lift. And that’s before the budget goes off the rails.

This $7.5 billion won’t build a wholly new station; it merely will add a bit of additional capacity to the existing location. There will be new passenger concourses, wider platforms for stepping off the train, a few new street entrances and a shopping area that will be built over the tracks. It’s a “visionary and practical approach to revitalize the terminal” that will take from 15 to 20 years to complete.

To the delight of Washington’s car-hating liberal establishment, the plan includes bulldozing the existing Union Station parking structure — one of the cheapest and most reliable places to park for an hour or two in the city. The liberals have been itching to replace it with an expanse of modernist glass architecture, destroying the beauty of the existing station’s classic lines, which were drawn by architect Daniel Burnham in 1903.

Amtrak claims the renovation will stimulate $15 billion in gross regional product over the next couple of decades. Given government rail’s profitless track record, such predictions are wishful thinking. As House Transportation Committee Chairman John L. Mica, Florida Republican, artfully pointed out Thursday, Amtrak can’t even sell a hamburger without taking a loss. In 10 years of selling food and beverages on its choo-choos, Amtrak has racked up a staggering $833 million loss.

As Mr. Mica explained, McDonald’s can sell a hamburger for $1, but Amtrak needs to sell it for $9.50. Yet even that inflated amount can’t cover the staggering $16.15 per-burger cost to taxpayers.

This is all to say it’s not a surprise that Amtrak and the Obama administration could conceive of a train-station rehabilitation with double the price tag of the Freedom Tower in New York City. It will cost $3.8 billion to construct that hub of commerce standing 1,776 feet tall out of the rubble of the World Trade Center. The contrast is poignant. One project is a symbol of America’s determination to succeed; the other is a symbol of the audacity of waste.

EPA report undercuts hysterical claims leveled against gas production

The anti-affordable energy crowd has suffered another setback. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Wednesday released the results of extensive testing that found nothing toxic in the water in Dimock, Pa. That’s the town where the anti-drilling documentary “Gasland” filmed dramatic images of a homeowner lighting his tap water on fire.

The film blamed the strange occurrence on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a procedure that uses a pressurized mixture to extract natural gas from shale rock formations. It argued the process had polluted the nearby ground water. Liberals were so thrilled by the hit job that they awarded it a special jury prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.

According to the EPA’s study, drilling is the not the root of the problems in Dimock. The agency sampled the well water at 61 homes and found health concerns in only five of them. The substances found include arsenic, barium and manganese, all of which are naturally occurring.

The inconvenient truth for self-styled environmental activists who’ve been protesting fracking operations is that natural gas’ abundance in the United States is a threat to trendy energy sources like wind and solar. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, domestic natural gas production increased 24 percent between 2006 and 2011. As more gas was extracted from the ground, prices dropped 72 percent, making it far less expensive for consumers to heat their homes during the winter and power their appliances throughout the year.

For the affordable energy industry, fracking is critical because it makes it possible to draw natural gas and oil from difficult rock formations. Without it, large pools of untapped energy would be kept off-limits. That’s exactly what anti-progress liberals want. Cheap, abundant, affordable and sensible choices like coal, natural gas and petroleum encourage energy independence based on domestic production.

Cheap energy is vital to the manufacturing sector, lowering the overall cost of goods which increases consumption. That drives economic growth and prosperity, but it does so without government involvement, direction and stimulus. By contrast, the left promotes the power sources of the past, windmills and sun power, because they cannot stand on their own without governmental support. Windmills don’t work if there’s no breeze, and solar panels don’t generate any electricity after sundown. As a result, they can only compete if speed bumps are placed in the way of oil and natural gas production. That’s why the left has put the smear campaign against fracking in high gear.

Unfortunately, much of the damage has already been done. Those who watched the documentary about flaming tap water aren’t likely to come across an obscure, 725-page report posted on EPA’s website. Regardless, they ought to know that fracking is here to stay. That’s good news for those of us who prefer cheap power to the overpriced alternatives.

The Supreme Court’s Obamacare ruling on Thursday cuts right to the very fabric of the relationship between a once-limited government and a once-free citizen, but the eternal struggle between liberty and tyranny endures. It is a beginning, not an end.

As enormously important as the high court’s Obamacare ruling is – and it’s huge – it’s not the final word. The legal and political dust has not yet settled, and it will take some time for the unpredictable ripples to form the powerful waves of history. Yet, history waits for no man, so we begin by asking: What now?

First, we mourn. We mourn that a nation built on the principle of limited government has grown the largest government in the history of humankind. We mourn that our Supreme Court rewrote Obamacare into Obamatax to allow for the individual mandate. We mourn that once again we read the lips of a president who promised he would not raise our taxes but did so anyway. We mourn that Washington no longer rules with the consent of the governed.

But this mourning, as appropriate as it is, must be short-lived. This struggle for our liberty, this struggle to abide by the principles of our founding begins anew. We can no longer trust that Washington will save the great experiment of self-governance that is the United States of America. Just as it has always been, the fate of our republic rests in the hands of the voters.

It’s now down to this: If Barack Obama holds the White House, and if Democrats win control of either house of Congress, then Obamacare will be unstoppable, and America will become the United States of Europe. We will have sacrificed our freedom and our exceptionalism for the false promises of the government-centered society. The 2012 election just became infinitely more important.

As the adage goes, Americans get the leaders we deserve. That our generation even allowed America’s fate to rest in the hands of nine men and women who upheld a law antithetical to the concept of limited government and individual freedom is a testament of our lost way. It’s time we stop hoping for better leaders and start becoming better citizens. It’s time we deserve better leaders.

Obamacare was forced upon us by 219 representatives, 60 senators and one president. Simply put, their time in office must end. As I’ve said before, politically speaking, we must level their cities and salt their fields. The barren wastelands of their once-promising careers will be a stark reminder to future would-be statist politicians who are willing to betray the will of Americans and break the covenant of our Constitution.

Only the voters can save America now.

Dr. Milton R. Wolf, a Washington Times columnist, is a radiologist and President Obama’s cousin. He blogs at miltonwolf.com.

For the American people, the Constitution means a great deal. For Washington, we were once again today reminded that the Constitution means very little.

Five Supreme Court Justices today decided to not impartially rule on the case – i.e. execute their solemn Constitutional charge. They instead decided to serve as five more ObamaCare lawyers – and create a brand new argument to unConstitutionally “justify” the ObamaCare mandate.

Team ObamaCare never argued before the Supreme Court that the individual mandate was a tax. The President and Team ObamaCare rigorously asserted it wasn’t a tax. There is twenty pages in the ObamaCare law that says it is a not a tax, but a nebulous power nebulously given to Congress by the abused and stretched-beyond-Reality Commerce Clause.

So where did these five Supreme Court Justices find this ObamaCare mandate “tax” “justification?” Only in their own fevered minds.

The Supreme Court today propped up the unConstitutional ObamaCare law by lending it the now further tarnished imprimatur of Supreme Court approval. It is in November again up to the American people to remind Washington that the Constitution matters. And that we are a nation of laws, not of men taking egregious liberties with their Constitutional charges.

IPads are too fancy, Nooks aren’t fancy enough, but Kindles are just right for teaching English, the State Department thinks, which is why it bought 2,500 of them from Amazon in a $16.5 million no-bid contract, NextGov’s Dawn Lim reports. That works out to $6,600 per Kindle Touch — a lot more than the $189 retail price. The plan, according to Kim, is to send the e-readers to “designated libraries and U.S.-friendly educational centers around the world.”

Since your paying for this ripoff, you might be a tad bit irritated. But that’s only because you’re an unsophisticated taxpayer. According to PR hacks, we really are getting a good deal because of all the extras in the agreement. Put down your coffee or soda before reading this passage from the report because I don’t want to be responsible for liquid on your computer screen.

Amazon is responsible for shipping the Kindles, providing 24-7 customer service, sharing data on how the Kindles are used to access content and pushing serialized content to the Kindles regularly. Amazon is also responsible for disabling “standard features, as as [sic.] requested by DoS, for the device such as individual purchasing ability.”

Wow, free shipping. That’s worth a lot. And the customer service surely adds a couple of bucks per unit, not to mention the extra pennies it must cost to disable features and provide electronic updates.

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